All the places to look for your next employee

I've talked and yammered and preached about how to get started on the right foot with your new entrepreneurial enterprise, a.k.a. your plumbing, HVAC, or electrical outfit. Whether you're already in the service business or slowly entering from remodeling or new construction work, I've laid the groundwork for a profitable, enjoyable future.

If you haven't read my previous articles, start now; or, if you have and haven't gotten off your duff yet, review them, because from this point on I'm going to assume you've actually moved into the service arena or are planning to do so soon. If you don't know where to find the articles, e-mail me.

We're about to travel down a proven road, learning from the experience of others I've met in the over 50 years of my industry journey. We'll start with maybe one of the most difficult problems we face as fledgling business owners — preparing to hire our first employee. Yep, it’s difficult for most, but I'll show you the easy way!

With so many folks leaving the industry and so few entering, there is a humongous shortage of trained persons. Even if you get lucky enough to find an already skilled tradesperson, you better figure that's a fluke ... they just ain't there, or they'll be job-hoppers who turn out to be flaky 99% of the time.

The answer to this problem is to hire for attitude and train for aptitude. Following are ways to find such a person, ways I personally used, or examples others have shared with me.

Friends and relations: Talk to your friends and relatives to see if they can recommend someone. You may be pleasantly surprised at the results.

Your communities: Enlarge the search to your communities, i.e., church, clubs or recreational groups. Make it fun by offering rewards. I even found great help in AA, but I don't recommend becoming an alcoholic to find good help.

Schools: Talk to high school or community college counselors. Post job opportunities on school bulletin boards or on their on-line bulletin boards. You may have to get permission to do this, but just being around educational outfits can be illuminating whether you find someone or not.

Big box stores: I personally, um, “appropriated” quite a few of their employees for my old company by looking for their sharper folks (there are quite a few and usually interested in the trades), then casually slipping them a special hiring business card I carried around that piqued their interest and got them to call ... but don't mention I did this.

Elders: One of the best moves I ever made was to hire an older person who was working in the plumbing department of a big box store. At the time I had three techs, was still in the truck half time, and was going crazy trying to run calls and answer technical questions at the same time. I had asked the guy how he knew so much about plumbing and he responded he'd had his own business at one time. (Bye-the-bye, that's your future selling PVC to homeowners if you don't begin to run a business instead of having a low-paid hobby.)

Anyway, I slipped him a business card, he called, and I hired him at twice the pay he was making to do easy plumbing calls plus answer most of the technical questions that my other three plumbers asked. I never got bogged down on the phone from that time on, and the man’s dignity was restored.

So that's it. That's how and where to hire your first employee, and the advantages are incredible – they start at relatively low pay, ride around with you to do the heavy lifting, learn as they go, become tremendously loyal, and are trained the way you want!

Of course, being a flat-rate service provider makes paying them while they learn very doable. Try it and see how rewarding, even enjoyable, the experience can be. And it's easy!

Some of the topics I’ll be writing about in the near future: Retaining employees; checklists to make running your new enterprise easy; women as plumbers or techs; handling all the legalities; building a biz that runs itself while you do ... whatever; how to train that employee; how to retain that employee; and much more. Stayed tuned.

Best,

Ol’ Ed

Ed O'Connell is the founder emeritus of O'Connell Plumbing Inc. He is the subcontracting business coach for smaller contractors and a Service Round Table Coach. He can be reached in Auburn, California, at home/office: 530/878-5273 or at [email protected].